Racial disparities continue to plague Massachusetts’ health care system, but thankfully, there’s a lot of work underway to change that.
“The pandemic is probably what changed and brought a lot of these issues that we’ve been dealing with to the forefront of people’s mind,” Boston Medical Center Dr. Sabrina Assoumou said.
One silver lining that came from the COVID-19 pandemic is the lessons that can be used to address conditions that disproportionately impact people of color, like diabetes, cardiovascular disease, maternal health and cancer, Boston-based physicians of color told NBC10 Boston Tuesday.
There’s no silver bullet to addressing these disparities, they said, but there is a lot of work underway to start.
“We know — we’ve known for a long time — that Black individuals are much more likely to die in the context of pregnancy,” Mass General Brigham Associate Chief Health Equity Officer Dr. Allison Bryant Mantha said.
The rate of severe maternal morbidity nearly doubled from 2011 to 2020, with complications highest among Black people, according to Department of Public Health data.
“People are realizing that this is really, truly a very devastating problem,” Assoumou said.
Both Boston Medical Center and Mass General Brigham have programs to address these disparities, including pairing people with doulas and remotely monitoring blood pressure. But experts say programs like these are just a couple of pieces to the puzzle.
“I think it’s important to think about where those inequities might come from,” Bryant Mantha said. “And so I think that we have to say the words ‘structural and systemic racism.’”
“What is the root cause of what we are seeing? Wealth,” Assoumou said. “I think that actually addressing wealth and how is it that we invest and help people increase their financial situation is actually an important piece of the puzzle.”
